Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Joan Collins and the Independent Group for tabling this motion. Quite a number of motions have been put before this House on workers' rights. Unfortunately, and I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State, it is a common theme of the debates on these motions that a senior Minister is not in attendance. The Minister of State may consider that to be a political jibe and an unfair political criticism but it is the truth. The last time we discussed a motion of this nature a number of months ago the very same comments were made and it was reported upon. Whether it is the Minister with responsibility for social protection, Deputy Humphreys or the Tánaiste and Minister with responsibility for business, their absence gives the sense to those who are deeply affected by these issues, the workers, that they are absent from the thought processes of the Cabinet, as Deputy Barry rightly pointed out. My frustration is that we seem to be going from one industrial dispute to another, dealing with the individual issues that arise in each individual case and not looking at the entirety of the industrial relations architecture of the State which is clearly deficient. Myself and Deputy Ged Nash proposed legislation to deal with this situation but it was dismissed by the Tánaiste as "virtue signalling".

That was a remarkable statement for the Tánaiste to make, when we try to be as constructive as possible and we try not to make personalised political jibes. It is a legislative body and we come here to propose legislation. As noted, Deputy Nash was the one who commissioned the Duffy Cahill report and he is somebody who knows this area intimately. He brought forward legislation, which is the appropriate thing to do, rather than trying to engage in any other type of political activity. However, our reasoned contribution was dismissed as virtue signalling by somebody who has done nothing.

It is also not good enough for the Tánaiste to say the Duffy Cahill report would not deal with the Debenhams situation. We might be willing to argue that over and back if the recommendations of Duffy Cahill had been actually implemented to the letter and then were found to be deficient. However, as has been stated, the Duffy Cahill report has been sitting somewhere in government since March 2016. To give my own party a level of credit, I do not think that would have happened if the Labour Party was still in government and I feel more weight would have been given to the importance of the issue. However, it is stuck on a shelf somewhere, not taken seriously by Government and certainly not taken seriously by the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, who has a history of watering down rhetoric around the rights of workers. He stood on a platform in order to become Fine Gael leader and Taoiseach, saying that essential workers should have restricted access to collective bargaining rights and the right to strike - it is in black and white in his literature. Again, as others have said, it is all very well to applaud these essential workers when they come to the country’s aid at a time of national crisis, but his instinct is that collective bargaining rights and strike rights are secondary to the great national endeavour about which he feels so strongly.

My point to the Minister is that this is about whether people feel the Government and the Legislature have their back or not. Is industrial relations in Ireland about conflict after conflict, or is it about having protections from within this body? I am glad I do not play golf and recent experiences have taught me I should never take up golf. Nonetheless, the industrial relations architecture of this State has been described as being like a golf club where somebody can become a member but they cannot play - they can join the golf club but they cannot play golf. In other words, the employer has a veto. Regardless of the efforts of many people in government and outside government who have put down legislation and tried to lobby in this area, we have probably some of the weakest industrial relations and collective bargaining legislation in Europe because the employer has a veto and there is no requirement on an employer to engage with a representative body which represents workers.

This is an economy in which, before Covid, 23% of workers were statistically on low pay, one of the highest rates of low-paid employment in the OECD, and some 40% of young people under 30 were in insecure work. These things happen only in economies which have weak industrial relations legislation and weak collective bargaining legislation.

What has happened before when a piece of legislation was brought to the Seanad or the Dáil is that the Attorney General has facilitated the Government by saying it is anti-constitutional. What we in the Labour Party would say is that it may be time to challenge that and to strengthen our Constitution by means of a constitutional amendment to enshrine workers’ rights in the Constitution. Therefore, no longer would we have the fallback position from Government that says, “We would love to help you and we really care deeply about this case or that case, but the Attorney General says it is unconstitutional, so what can we do?” If we can take on some of the thorniest, most difficult and divisive issues in Irish society, bring them to the people and have them resolved by means of a referendum, then why can we not do it for workers’ rights? If it means we have to require an employer to engage with the representative body of the workers, let us do it, because then we will not have an economy which is underpinned by low pay. I am quite sure it is an insult to people's sense of morality or decency, no matter what their background, where they live or what their income bracket is, that this economy has been propped up by low-paid work. This affects 23% of workers and, as was said earlier by Deputy Connolly, these are disproportionately women, migrant workers and young people.

I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, to tell the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, to stop with the jibes, to engage with the responsibility he has, to implement the Duffy Cahill report and to maybe investigate the entire infrastructure through which we are operating. What is he so afraid of and what is the Government so afraid of? We need to even up the imbalance. If it takes a constitutional referendum, I am sure Deputies around this House and the people of Ireland would support such a referendum. It may take 18 months or two years, but I believe if we had that, we would not have this situation with the Debenhams workers, who have been courageously fighting for so long and inspiring so many people across the country with their battle, and we would not have poverty pay, insecure work and the level of unemployment that has been caused by Covid, which is directly connected with the way our economy has been constructed.

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